


Dead Men Can't Walk

by apocalypseAwake



Category: Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: Child Abuse, M/M, Physical Abuse, Self Harm, kind of steve/tony?, trigger warning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-01
Updated: 2013-12-01
Packaged: 2018-01-03 03:05:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1065005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apocalypseAwake/pseuds/apocalypseAwake
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Trigger warning for child abuse, self harm, and alcoholism.<br/>An unedited oneshot I wrote in 20 minutes while on bunches of pain meds.<br/>-<br/>Sometime around age nine, Tony realizes that dead men can't walk, nonetheless help someone like him.<br/>Sometime around age twelve, Tony realizes that he, himself, is a dead man walking.<br/>And sometime in the middle, he finds a way to cope. Kind of.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dead Men Can't Walk

One any particular day in the Stark residence, three things would happen:

1) His father, the genius, would get drunk.  
Howard was a mad drunk.

2)Little Tony would end up with marks he couldn't exactly wear to show-and tell.

3)Tony wishes that Captain America would help him get out. 

Sometime around age nine, Tony realizes that dead men can't walk, nonetheless help someone like him.  


Sometime around age twelve, Tony realizes that he, himself, is a dead man walking.  


And sometime in the middle, he finds a way to cope. Kind of. 

No one noticed, or at least said anything. He was smart about hiding himself. He wore his light brown jacket day by day, accompanied with dark jeans and sunglasses. The perfect hide-all for bruises and scars. He didn't participate in gym class at school, and made a point of it. Too many risks.  


His Father's career would be in shambles if they found the distinctly shaped, dark bruises littering the body of the preteen. Tony couldn't have that. He'd been warned.  
Tony knew how to lie well by the second grade, could come up with a lie in less than a minute that hit every base. 

The scars accumulating on the preteen's thighs, and then arms never raised any questions. It started out slow. A scratch here, a burn there. Eventually the wounds would get bigger, he noticed. Tony didn't try to keep them small, didn't bother to keep it a secret from his father. This, he found out, was a mistake.  
He'd be more careful next time.

By the age of twelve and a half, Tony landed himself in the ER. Ten stitches. 

His father had a press release, said that little Tony had fallen. Later, when talking to Tony's mother, Maria, Howard had let it slip that hospitalizing the boy would be bad for publicity. Howard didn't have the decency to wait until Tony was out of the room, but that didn't matter to Tony. He didn't want help.  


 _Of course,_ the genius thought, _it would be bad for the old man._

Their butler, an old man by the name of Jarvis was the only person in the house who seemed to care. He told Tony that he'd be there whenever the boy needed it, but damned if Tony would show enough emotion to take him up on that.  


Instead, he thanked the Butler and said he would.

After Tony got stitches, Howard took it easy for a month or so. Wouldn't want the kid's stitches to break so he'd have to be taken in again. Tony took it easy, too. The doctor's couldn't see new cuts when they were examining the stitches, or taking them out.  
They might start to question Howard's parenting skills. 

By the age of 13, Tony Stark wasn't living, but he wasn't dead. He was just there.  
The new teen wasn't trying to die, wasn't exactly suicidal. He just wasn't trying to survive, not trying to live. The genius still hoped sometimes. He still thought of a specific ice-bound hero whenever he needed saving.

Tony still yearned to get out, to be able to stop with the blank front he had to put up. He still craved to be anywhere but there.  
He had always been a genius, that's just how it is, but with the recent influx of hormones came an influx of thoughts and numbers and everything. Numbers overwhelmed him, and the only way to get away was to add another scar.

Tony had never had a flashback until the day he turned 15, never had any traces of PTSD. It came on suddenly, and he began remembering. Tony was close to finishing school, though, and he was busy enough with that. The work was easy, but there was a lot of it. He had learned to control the numbers, learned to use them as an advantage. The memories, however, Tony couldn't find a god damned use for those. He boxed up his emotions and hid them deep in countless bottles of scotch.

Naturally, It came as a surprise to him when, years upon years later, they found and thawed none other than Steve Rogers. A hero.


End file.
